


at the dark end of the street

by burgundians



Series: holy wine [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 00:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11264151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burgundians/pseuds/burgundians
Summary: He sees Credence Barebone across the street and thinks of a No Man’s Land. That boy is barbed wire.





	at the dark end of the street

> _But it is hardly possible to love one's wife and justice at the same time_. – Albert Camus, _The Possessed_

 

 

When he returns home from the war, his father is dead, his sister is in school and his brother’s sons are sleeping in their cradle. There’s something unnatural about such a birth, six months in their mother’s womb, fathered by a dead man.

His sister-in-law is wearing black, and it seems like a dreadful offense. Clothilde wore red evening dresses and airy skirts and showed too much cleavage and too much ankle for their Boston society.

She looks like a corpse. 

He imagines he looks like one too.

He doesn’t say anything as her trembling hand keeps refilling their glasses, the beading of her evening gown twinkling in the dim light. A party of two. A masquerade, he thinks, a big damn joke.

The alcohol doesn’t really dull grief and they agree to never speak of that night, of the heat of her thighs around his head, for as long as they live. He doesn’t hold it against her, he’s always been the wrong brother.

In his heart he’s still in the trenches and he will not speak of the war. Nobody can make him.

~

It’s been ten years when he sees him for the first time. It’s ten years when he doubts for the first time.

Tina Goldstein is a creature of bravery and courage and all an Auror should be. Youthful idealism too, but that will be broken out of her sooner or later. He thinks sooner as her hands twitched, standing in his office, seeing her hard won career slipping through her fingers.

But she was too young for the War, she doesn’t know. Can’t conceive the moment, staring down a machine gun, when he realized wizards were sitting ducks.

They allowed themselves to lag behind as the No Majs advanced and created and tore apart to a scale he had never even imagined in the comfort of a future set for him in the shadow of the Graves name.

He sees Credence Barebone across the street and thinks of a No Man’s Land. That boy is barbed wire.

The Barebone boy and the eldest sister are lovely. He doubts it was an accident. He doubts their mother and self-appointed prophet chose those two, out of New York’s army of orphans, randomly. White as milk, frail as birds, men have fallen for less.

She misplayed her hand like a clumsy child, he thinks grimly, she could have made a Bartholomew of him, a snake oil salesman of the highest degree. Instead, he’s a ghost distributing pamphlets that nobody reads.

He is turning away when the boy looks at him, dark eyed, still and silent, a petrified forest.

It disturbs him more than he’s willing to admit. No creature of meat and bone should look with those eyes.

They pick a new place every week and he takes to following. One day, when the leaves are starting to turns brown, the Barebone boy sidesteps him. It’s almost an accident but not quite, not when he raises his eyes to him.

“Would you like a pamphlet, sir?”

Is this your rebellion, boy, he wants to ask, looking into the eyes of the men that look at you.

“Thank you.” He opens the flier, sparing a glance for the image of the coven of witches. If they’ve ever danced naked in the moonlight, he wasn’t invited, he thinks sardonically. “Save America from Witches! Join our Army!” He reads aloud.

The boy is silent. The throng of pedestrians parts around them.

“That’s bold. What war are you preparing for?” He has to hand it to Mary Lou, nothing stirs the blood like a war.

He sees the jaw bone clench under the paper skin.

“I’m not mocking you.” He continues. “But I’ve been in a war and this time I’d like to know who the enemy is.”

The boy relaxes minutely.

“There are several veterans that come to the meetings, sir, you’re free to come as well. We hold meetings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays.”

 _Warning from History that must not go unheeded_ , he reads later in his office. They’re wrong, the warning does not come from History, it comes from the present. If they go up against No Majs, they’ll lose. There’s no other outcome, not in this day in age. Mary Lou Barebone and Gellert Grindelwald are nothing more than two faces of the same coin, making the same crucial mistake.

Wizardkind has more to fear than the other way around.

No matter the sacrifice, or the sacrificial lamb, the voice in his head reminds him, the good of many must be safeguarded above all else.

Even if the lamb is Credence Barebone, for whom he goes back, week after week. He refuses to argue with himself, ignores that knowledge that this is a terrible, stupid idea, that he’s far too old to get attached, far too smart to be the Dorcus Twelvetrees to Credence’s Bartholomew.

He can’t touch him, the boy looks like ice. He could freeze the heart in him.

He keeps his distance. To Credence, he will never be anything more than a kind benefactor with deep pockets and a fondness for hot drinks. He can settle with watching the vapor of the green tea dissipate under Credence’s breaths. He can live with watching him slowly bloom in the cold like a winter daphne.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting a pretty face, he reminds himself. It’s natural. It’s animal. 

That’s not all you want, his conscience crows at him, if you just wanted to fuck him, you’d find a black haired whore to call Credence and whisper “Percival Percival Percival” and be done with it.

He allows himself his fantasies in the darkness of his house and empty bed. Nobody would ever need to know if he offered what he could to Credence, his indulgence of a besotted fool. He’s not a good man, or a pleasant one but he could make him happier than he is now, in that shack of a church. In his dreams, he’d throw a fortune into the river for a tender glance. Those dark, dark eyes. He’s never wished to be thought fondly of before, had no concern for his own charisma. Percival Graves had always wanted to be a just man before being a good one, but Justice is a cruel mistress. So is love but he already knew that.

An old, unremarkable memory crawls into his consciousness as he lies there in bed, panting and shamed.

There was one Private in his unit of American wizards that took upon himself the task of fucking his way through all the No Maj brothels of Northern France. He remembers a group of young men crowding around him, Percival to the side, pretending he’s not listening, already a cold sonuvabitch at thirty.

“What’s the difference?” He remembers one of the men asking and Private Williams had no choice but to shrug.

“Nothing, they’re just women.”

Speak the truth and shame the Devil, he had smirked then.

The empty darkness of his room won’t betray him. It won’t betray the dreams of a young man half his age, and the shadow those eyelashes cast. Oh, but there is life there yet, he thought when the corner of Credence’s lip quirked at a quip. There is hope, still.

He wants to keep him. He wants to feed him, put a roof over his head, surround him with tender things. Cover him with walls for him to storm for entry in that hot mouth, that treasure of treasures.

Not his roof, he reminds himself, never his roof. At most, he could set him up somewhere, a nice little apartment, no better than one of a hundred gangsters’ molls and politicians’ girlfriends all across the city. 

He could. Nobody would notice one more.

He could have this one thing but he is not a man that allows himself indulgences. That way madness lies.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Points for who can spot The Man In The High Castle quote)
> 
> I'm on tumblr @braganzas if anybody wants to yell at me


End file.
